“I like that,” said Sally. “It leads one on and on. Who said that?”

“Isaac Pennington. How I do run on, dear! It’s old age. And I want to show you the linen cupboard.”‘

(Pilgrim’s Inn, by Elizabeth Goudge)

It is strange how much love can be held in a little structure of glass and metal. It is even stranger how easy it is to stop seeing it.

The terrarium has hung over my bookcase for months now, a shining reminder of my husband’s love. But over time it has melted into the fabric of our home, so familiar and comfortable that it’s become at times invisible. I forget it is there, until something reminds me. . . candlelight, or, like tonight, the glow of a New Mexico sunset.

It wasn’t the substance that drew my gaze, but the shadow of it. . . there on the wall, rich with the colors of the sky.

The shadow.

****

Robert is on the other side of the world right now. . . his today is my tomorrow and he is falling asleep at night as I am waking up in the morning. And while I truly have never felt any major shift in our lives, that abrupt end of the ‘honeymoon’ phase that was supposed to happen one day, I have realized in these quiet days of his absence that I have lost sight of something precious since the early months of our marriage. I’ve grown so accustomed to the beauty of life that I’ve stopped seeing it in the bright places where I once saw it so clearly.

I’m finding it again, now, in the shadows of his absence — in the scent of cedarwood and the vastness of a queen size bed. And the shadow of a glass case in the sunset, saying ‘This is the bright love you’ve been given. . . see its shadow on the wall? Feel its flutters within, growing ever stronger and more insistent?’

****

Yes, my eyes are weak, and sometimes I need the shadow to remind me of the substance. But so do we all, because we are human. And God knows this.

I was writing lesson plans this evening for the language arts class I strive to teach, and as I wrote I pondered how very many shadows God casts for us in Genesis. We’ve seen the substance so many times — Christ, dead and raised — that sometimes our eyes are blinded and we must see in a glass darkly to see at all. And so God shows us the ram caught in the brambles and the king of Salem serving wine and bread and over and over the shadows dance so that the substance may glow again in our minds.

****

The sunset has long since faded, but tonight, there is a candle glowing behind the glass walls of his love, casting shadows that remind me the substance is real.

We celebrated our anniversary a few weeks ago, with a trip to Iceland, and so yesterday we just spent a quiet evening with each other. We settled in with a slice of cheesecake and a glass of wine and a year’s worth of memories, and it was an evening of quiet wonder.

I could write a list (a very long one) of things I have learned in this year of being married, or things I am grateful for. But the thing which struck me with the most force yesterday was not a list of things I have learned in a year of marriage, but that, Lord willing, we don’t get just one. Marriage doesn’t end after the first year. Yesterday we celebrated one year of marriage, and it was wonderful. . . but this morning, we woke up on the first day of our second year. And I made coffee for two and my best friend kissed me when he left for work, and please God, we will get to do this another year, and the year after that, and the year after that, and my breath catches when I realize the enormity of this gift God has given us. I am so inestimably grateful for this year, so very thankful for the gift of this year that we didn’t deserve. And I am so very, very thankful that, if God pleases, we don’t get just one.

This is the first day of the rest of our lives.

photo credit: sarah marcella

Madeliene L’Engle, “A Wind In the Door”

Young wife, you are returned at last from roaming the earth with your husband. Your body is weaker than it was, thanks to the grueling days of travel and fever and not-eating with which you said goodbye to the quiet wilderness of Iceland. But your heart is strengthened by the Love who carried your backpack and stroked your hair and in the end brought you safely home. (And who the next day worked a full day and bought you juice and grapes and cooked you tacos while you slept on the couch.)

And your imagination, so long snuggled deep in the contented nest of this love, begins to ruffle its feathers and stretch its wings and peer about at the great world which you have glimpsed. Do you wonder, as it opens its bright eyes, where its purpose lies? Why anyone would encourage it to fly, and then scribble down its wandering paths? Why retell these stories, why tempt the imaginations of children to peep out of their nests and stretch their wings to fly, too?

The call of the “real” world is strong, and rightly so. You live in a material world that is real, and you know, young wife, that practicality is a precious art to be loved and embraced. But this very real world that we see and breathe is metaphor and a veil for another world, equally real but unseen and unseeable…except through faith.

Young wife, you have seen incredible things in this beautiful, material world. You have seen a dying sun and a coral moon balanced low in a blue sky like a pair of cosmic scales. You have seen glaciers flowing painfully into valleys, like some arthritic monster advancing his territory with agonizingly slow steps. You have seen desolation trying its best to keep its grip on lava fields long ago cooled, and being overcome by living moss like grace.

Young wife, you have also seen incredible things in the beautiful and immaterial world in which you also live. You have seen that the monsters who hide in the valleys of your soul are real, and that the grace of God overwhelms all that is desolate. You have seen the reality that is beyond the reality. Only in glimpses, perhaps. . . but, young wife, the secret to those glimpses lie in the bright eyes of your imagination. Not because all that you imagine is real, but because all that is real cannot be known or seen–and imagination teaches you to look beyond that which is seen. Imagination teaches you how to pull up the corner of the curtain and peep behind it.

Do you remember that this is why you love to write? Do you remember that you love the words with which you can, for a moment, cross between the worlds of seen and unseen? Do you remember what it is like to look on a tossing sea or a child reaching for her father and see the swirling metaphor and poetry and color that lies beneath that moment? Your imagination stirs and wakens. . . let it scramble to the edge of the nest and become the flurry of words and wings, singing of true things, real things, the things that lie behind the curtain of mere water and rock. Trace the flightpaths and re-sketch them in paper and ink so that others may follow. This is why you imagine; this is why you write. Remember these things, and stretch your paper wings once more.

Above our little house, above the foothills we nestle against, there is an iron forest ranged along the crest of the mountains. On clear and warm days like today, it looks like nothing more than a cluster of radio towers. At night, when it is shrouded in darkness, it becomes a bit more magical, because it glows with red stars. But it only shows itself for what it really is when there is a fresh snowfall, when it and the mountain it stands on fuse together in whiteness and become an ice-castle for a mysterious princess.

I keep meaning to write about it, the princess locked inside of the ice-castle. On quiet afternoons like this one, I sit down at my kitchen table in front of an open window, coffee in hand, ready to dream out a new story on paper. And when the coffee is gone and I look at what is written, I find that I have not written a story of an ice-princess, nor of a never-ending beach, nor of the whale that lives in the clouds of the painting we have thought of purchasing. All I have written is a love letter from an girl with an empty coffee cup to her best friend, who kisses her in the doorway when he gets home in the afternoon and who carries her whole heart with him when he leaves her in the morning.

I once thought that our love would inspire my words, my scribbled tales, my figments of thought. I was right. I just didn’t realize, then, that it would be so powerful as to make it nearly impossible to write any story other than that of our love. I realize it now. And the truth is that I really don’t mind in the slightest. I love this story, love the living and the telling and the writing of it, the way that it does not grow old, only worn in beautiful patinaed patterns like the gold band on an old man’s hand.

I love the beauty of this story of ours, this love we share. And I have come to a decision. I will no longer try not to write love letters–that has shown itself to be impossible. So, I will bow to this fact and write them, as eloquently and richly as I can. And I will try, if I can, to clothe these letters afresh–to wrap them with ice castles and beaches and the night-riders who live in our mountains. But the letters themselves, they shall stay there, tucked safely into the heart of the story, like the glowing golden heart of a daisy. Because without them, the stories are empty words, floating petals. There is a kind of beauty in flower petals, though they fade and brown quickly. But the story God has graciously given me to tell is one of much fuller and more lasting beauty than petals alone. Only the heart of the daisy, or the whole daisy will do. Our love letters are the heart. I mean to deck it with petals if I can…but if I cannot, then I will go on writing the heart. Because I must.

‘Pens and paint, a good voice production, and grease paint and things aren’t the only means of expression. Some people express loveliness just by loving. It’s the better way…’

‘…That’s at the root of all giving, don’t you think? At the root of all art. You can’t hoard the beauty you’ve drawn into you; you’ve got to pour it out again for the hungry, however feebly, however stupidly. You’ve just got to.’

(quotations taken from ‘Pilgrim’s Inn’ by Elizabeth Goudge)

you were curious about what it would be like, living in the high desert. used as you were to wine country, rolling hills covered in vineyards, oaks, and redwoods, you were not certain what you would think about living in a land of angles–vertical mountains, flat valleys, cactus spines and box-like buildings. you knew that, whatever you found, you would make it your home. but you didn’t know how easy it would be to make your home among the harsh angles, or much you would like it once you had. you didn’t know this, because you didn’t know that wells come in all shapes and sizes. they look different to each person.

but here you are, in your desert home, and you have found your well…or rather, he found you, and brought you here. you see, your well has dark hair and eyes that never seem to know what color they are. your well has strong hands, hands that wear your ring and open your doors and hold your hand and sometimes wipe away your tears. this is your well, and because of him your desert is beautiful beyond comparison. because of him, the stars pour out water for you to drink and you know the sound of footsteps that are different from all the rest.

you once drove through this desert, years ago, when he was only the name of a friend’s brother whom you had never met, and you thought this desert was the ugliest place you had ever seen. you thought that the land of enchantment was called that because it was under a spell, waiting for the return of the prince to set it free. perhaps that was only because you drove through the wrong part of it…but i think there is a better explanation than this. i think that it was ugly because for you there was no well as yet, and because the prince had not come. now your desert hides a well. the spell is broken. and so, now, this place that is a desert is a beautiful place full of light, adventure, and the most glorious of sunrises and sunsets. what makes the desert beautiful is that it hides, not just a well, but your well…your very own.

‘”hear that?” said the little prince. “we’ve awakened this well and it’s singing…”‘

(from “the little prince” by alexander de saint-exupery)

sometimes it comes mightily, rolling over you like the ocean waves you danced in, the day he asked and you said yes. it sparkles like the new ring on your finger, sweeps above your head in gusts like the parachute you married him beneath.

sometimes joy comes quietly, falling like the thin layer of snow on your tent in the november mountains. it is there beneath your still-sparkling ring, where the gold has rubbed your skin red from dishwashing and adventures outdoors in the cold. it glows gently like the lights on the tree that, together, you cut and propped up with books because the stores were out of stands, that you planned to decorate but together decided to leave plain, quiet, and wrapped in lights like this joy that fills your heart and your home and your coffee pot on early mornings.

someday joy will come noisily, like the sounds of children’s feet in the hallway and memorizing the multiplication tables and romance interrupted by a baby crying in the night. it will come persistently, like bills and a toddler asking why. it will be no less joy for all that.

right now, it is easy to see joy. it is quiet, uncluttered. young wife, enjoy this tranquil joy. learn to recognize joy in its snowy garb, so that someday, when it comes crashing in like hot-wheels and legos, you will not be deceived by its noisy splendor, will recognize it as your old friend, joy, merely wearing new clothes.

and then, in the someday beyond even that, when the sound has drifted away like children to college and to marriage, joy will cloak itself in quietude once more and return. young wife, when you are no longer young and you are learning once more to cook for two, recognize the return of this quiet joy, steadfast and patient like the hand that still holds yours, and praise your God.

because making morning coffee for two is a special thing.

watching a coyote amble through our neighborhood is a special thing.

turning an orange cart into a hot drink ‘station’ equipped with coffee maker, coffee grinder, electric kettle, tea pot, and all manner of teas and coffees is special thing.

sneaking kisses in the plumbing aisle of home depot is special.

watching my husband turn a tripod and a light bulb and a target lamp shade into the coolest lamp i’ve ever seen is a special thing.

celebrating when costco carries something packaged small enough for two is a special thing.

making dinner in our own kitchen is a special thing.

watching my husband make dinner in our own kitchen, because i’m too sick to do it, is a special thing.

spontaneous hiking trips that turn into hanging around the kitchen warming up with tea that turn into getting new mexican food at this little place that tastes like homemade is a special thing.

hearing coyotes outside our window when we’re falling asleep at night is a special thing.

singing ‘the puppy song’ while hiking, or trying to harmonize while making dinner, is a special thing.

hanging out at the mvd getting our jeep registered is a special thing.

washing uniforms is a special thing.

working out in the morning together before i’m fully awake is a special thing.

deliberating over organic versus regular tomatoes is a special thing.

my husband picking cactus spines out of my bike tires is a special thing.

making plans and lists and starlit trips to get much-needed produce and un-needed ice cream is a special thing.

real, everyday life is a special thing.

it’s a gift. taking just one more breath during this life God has given us is a special thing, and it always has been. getting to do real, everyday life, just getting to eat and breathe and live with my best friend is….beautiful. and i am intensely grateful for all of it.

all things will change
we wait for the rain
and the promise remains
(josh garrels.jacaranda tree)

the Promise remains. the gold promise that encircles the finger on my left hand…yes. but there is a Promise still more precious than that–although i confess that is sometimes hard to remember, hard to comprehend, even hard to treasure. there is the Promise of God’s faithfulness. His love, His guidance. His strength. and while the reality is that the promise of marriage results in the kind of limbo that i described above, it is also a reality that God’s Promise can only act as an anchor, which is steady. always. it is not confused or hidden by periods of uncertainty, of transition. the Promise remains, because our God remains the same, yesterday, today, and forever.

one month from today (or yesterday…it is nearing midnight and i will probably not get this posted before the clock turns), this strange experience known as ‘engagement’ will be over…the finish line (the starting line) is very much in sight. and yet, most of the time, it still feels very far away. one month is a long time to live in limbo. but i am thankful for the Promise, that God is faithful to accomplish His will in us, that He is our place not only of refuge but of habitation. wherever ‘home’ may be, my true home ought to be at His feet. i pray that, wherever i am physically, wherever my heart may be, that i will find my home in Him in the next month, and in all of the months and the years and the decades to come…

]]> http://teaandfigments.com/2014/09/19/twenty-nine/feed/ 4 http://teaandfigments.com/2014/08/12/full/ http://teaandfigments.com/2014/08/12/full/#comments Tue, 12 Aug 2014 18:14:31 +0000 http://carreena.wordpress.com/?p=1332 life is full right now.

in just sixty-seven days i will give my life to the man i love. two weeks after that, i will move with him to a new state…a new home.

there is a stack of boxes quickly growing like some fungus all over the room that my patient sister and i share. some of them are full, marked, taped, ready to be packed into the u-haul. others are half-full, waiting for like items to complete them so that hopefully, the mysteries of unpacking will not be so mysterious. others are empty, waiting around because they seemed like a ‘useful’ or ‘versatile’ size, or because they seemed too ‘sturdy’ to recycle.

life is feeling a lot like that stack of boxes, right now. so very full…of responsibilities, things to be done, people who love me, people to love.  a little bit empty in places, knowing that these are my last few months in the place that has been home for twenty years of my life. a lot overwhelmed by stacks of priorities that have a tendency to slip and slide at the most inconvenient of times, and make a mess all over the room in my heart called ‘conscience.’

but, like that stack of boxes…life is unbelievably exciting, right now. full, not of fear, but of promise. and yes, i am quite aware that it is not all ‘happy’ promise. i am more aware than most people realize of how relationships with the people you love the most require the most work, pain, and sacrifice.  i am more aware than most people realize of just how difficult this thing called ‘Life’ can be.

but i am also well aware that my best friend and i, we serve a great and sovereign God, who has filled us, and will be faithful to fill us, with all that we need to glorify Him and love each other. and so, perhaps it is crazy, but i am looking forward, not only to living life with robert, but to living Life with him. to being emptied again and again with him, so that together we can be filled with the fullness of the love of Christ. so that, filled ourselves, we can fill each other with the love we have received from God. i am fearful at times, but i am so looking forward to pulling up roots and putting them down again afresh in a new place, in a new name…and in the love of God, which never changes.

‘for this reason i bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.’

ephesians 3:14-19

It is a little-known fact that foxes lay eggs. Most science books will tell you that foxes give birth to live young. For most of our lives, Robert and I were under this delusion ourselves. This is the story of how we were convinced otherwise…and of how our relationship developed along the way.

According to Winnie-the-Pooh, ‘it all comes, I suppose…of liking honey so much.’ In my case, it all comes of liking children’s books and the color orange so much. Knowing this about me, Robert spent a lot of care and thought in picking out the perfect birthday present for me last year. He sent me an orange felt case for my laptop, shaped like a fox. It looked like it had come straight from the pages of a beautifully-illustrated children’s book. Such a special present deserved an equally special thank-you note, so I designed a card with an orange paper fox on the front, and wrote my thanks inside it. I included a wax paper packet of chocolate-covered espresso beans in the bottom of the package, put the card on the top, and mailed it.

A few days later, Robert sent a text, thanking me for the ‘fox eggs.’  ‘Fox eggs? What are you talking about? Foxes don’t lay eggs,’ I replied. But obviously, they had…or why else would Robert have received a paper nest full of chocolate eggs, with a mama fox sitting on top? At first I was incredulous, because all my science books said that foxes gave birth to live young. But then I remembered that foxes are very good at keeping secrets…and eggs with tiny baby foxes inside are certainly special secrets. I realized that probably even most scientists didn’t know about fox eggs. This realization did cause me some worry, however…because, if what I thought were chocolate-covered coffee beans were actually fox eggs, perhaps Robert was eating a baby fox every time he ate one of the egg-shaped treats I had sent him.

However, I remembered a conversation I had just a few days before with my 3-year-old cousin, Moriah, in which she told me about the habits of turtles. Turtles, it seems, lay eggs also. If the mama turtle has eaten lemondrops for breakfast, the eggs will turn into baby turtles. If the mama has eaten broccoli or spinach for breakfast, the eggs won’t turn into baby turtles. It only made sense that the same would be true for foxes, I reasoned…and I was pretty certain that the paper fox had eaten only broccoli for breakfast.

That summer, Robert came home to visit and brought with him a stack of books he thought I would enjoy. Among them was a book that proved instrumental in helping us to focus and grow our relationship. He even made a special cover for the book, complete with a hand-drawn picture of a mama fox sitting on a nest full of eggs. That book was my companion for quite some time over the summer.

So, when my mom and I were at a garage sale some time later, and I found a set of three little orange eggs (most people would call them glass eggs, but I knew that they had baby foxes inside), I bought them. I made a little nest for them and gave them to Robert the next time that he was at home. These eggs lived on his desk for quite some time. Enough time, in fact, to make us a little bit concerned, because none of them seemed inclined to hatch. Perhaps the mama fox had not eaten any lemondrops.

But one day, when Robert’s mom was visiting him in Ohio, he walked into his room and noticed not three, but two eggs sitting in their little nest…and next to the nest, there was a newly-hatched wooden fox!  (Some people are inclined to believe that this incident was in some way connected with a couple of visits I had paid earlier in the week: first to a toy store that sold wooden animals, and then to Mrs. Raynor’s house. However, the timing of these visits was purely coincidental and entirely unconnected to the hatched egg).

A month or so later, Robert came back for a visit. I suggested that he should probably bring along the eggs that had still not hatched. After all, if one of them hatched while he was gone, the baby fox might need his care. Sure enough, while he was at my house, he looked into his backpack, where he had put the nest for safe-keeping, and discovered a newly-hatched fox inside. (Once more, this was not in any way related to a visit I had paid the week before to a different toy store that sold wooden animals…)

The last egg took quite some time to hatch…or so we thought. Robert thought that it might hatch while I was paying a visit to him last October, but no new foxes appeared. It wasn’t until Robert came back home for Christmas that the last fox found its way into his backpack. It turned out, it had hatched while I was visiting Robert in Ohio, but it had accidentally fallen into one of my bags. That fox stayed with me for a while, and I was inclined to keep it…but I thought it would be happier on Robert’s desk with the other foxes.

Well…January came around again, and once more, Robert picked out the perfect birthday gift for me. What is more, he made it himself: a blog theme designed to look like his desk, complete with his notebook and pencil, and, of course…a fox, and the fox eggs that lived on his desk. Because he built the theme using actual pictures of his desk and different items from it, it took some time to get it up and running…enough time, in fact, for him to give me the most wonderful present of all. In June, my best friend gave me a ring and his promise to be my husband. Which means that, before it becomes our blog, the theme Robert created for my birthday gets to first serve us as a website for our wedding…and the inspiration for many of the wedding details.

Foxes and eggs have been a playful element in our relationship for quite a while. Besides being a fun inside joke, it has also provided Robert and me with a tangible way of looking back over our relationship and remembering where we were at different points along the way. We are both so thankful for the way that God has worked to bring us together over the past two years. It has not been easy. In many ways, it has been the most difficult thing either of us has ever done. But by His grace, we have grown and learned so much, and it amazes us to look back on where we were at the beginning of our story and how far we have come since then. We are looking forward to growing even closer to each other and to our Savior in the years that we have ahead of us, and we covet your prayers that our marriage would bring glory to the One who brought it about.